Has anyone homebrewed an Assymetrical campaign system for armada?
I mean a system that really emphasis the BiG Evil Empire hunting down the Puny rebellion, more Cat and mouse with the Rebels relying on Hit and Run and the Empire's vaste Fleet spread out across dozens of Sytems in order to Catch the rebel fleet or find their secret base. Kinda like how Rebellion plays,
So has anyone done this (and had a good result?)
I made some scenarios where I have a few rebel captains vs an imperial player. It is kinda hit and miss. Lots of opportunity to use different upgrades.
The problem usually boils down to having meaningful objectives on both sides that are “fun”.
Asymmetrical games are very difficult to design well. Probably the best starting point would be a miniatures board game or dungeon crawler like decent or imperial assault and look at how they handle “small band of plucky heroes vs endless supply of faceless mooks and an occasional boss”.
Netrunner (the card game) might be another source of inspiration. Much more work to adapt, though. It has a dynamic where one side is almost purely defensive and reactionary, while the other side is offensive and pro active. So having the imperial player assigning fleets to protect various planets with hidden resources/Intel/priority targets/traps while the rebel player has to make probing raids to discover what targets are worth committing to would be HUGELY thematic, but also a massive amount of work to develop and balance.
28 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:Asymmetrical games are very difficult to design well. Probably the best starting point would be a miniatures board game or dungeon crawler like decent or imperial assault and look at how they handle “small band of plucky heroes vs endless supply of faceless mooks and an occasional boss”.
Netrunner (the card game) might be another source of inspiration. Much more work to adapt, though. It has a dynamic where one side is almost purely defensive and reactionary, while the other side is offensive and pro active. So having the imperial player assigning fleets to protect various planets with hidden resources/Intel/priority targets/traps while the rebel player has to make probing raids to discover what targets are worth committing to would be HUGELY thematic, but also a massive amount of work to develop and balance.
I want to basically take Correllian Conflict, Disect it, butcher it and rip it apart then sew it back to together with Star Wars Rebellion (which I think did a good job of Asymmetric warfare) and fill in the leftover holes with Homebrewage.
Which obviously would take a lot of work so I was hoping Someone else did it for me Already haha, or at least had some stuff I get glean ideas from
Edited by clontroper5Oh, yeah. I meant to mention rebellion as well. Although that will probably fall into the common map campaign trap of having predominately lopsided individual battles, making the campaign level stuff more important than the game it was meant to facilitate.
Obnoxiously, now that I have mentioned it, I can't get the Netrunner idea out of my head. I'm probably going to waste a huge amount of time mulling over ways that could be adapted into a wargaming campaign.
I’m reminded of GWs half hearted attempt.
Many eons ago there was the Storm of Chaos campaign for Warhammer Fantasy, where most of the bad dudes united behind Acheron the Everchosen and he marched the all conquering armies south.
His army list basically has one major rule:
”Whenever you play this army, you have twice the points to play with than your opponent. All missions are ignored and replaced with “You only win if you completely wipe out your enemy. Your opponent only wins by having a survivor at end of the given rounds... (which were 5-7 semi randomly).”
Asymmetrical, but hardly..... fun.
Naked advantage is one thing, but the hardest pointbis having the underdog feel like they can accomplish something...
The problem is: Insurrection and Terrorism is an integral part of insurgence and asymmetrical warfare...
but it makes a crummy, un-fun warGAMING concept for a lot of people, unless it’s handled well.
1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:The problem usually boils down to having meaningful objectives on both sides that are “fun”.
23 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:Asymmetrical games are very difficult to design well. Probably the best starting point would be a miniatures board game or dungeon crawler like decent or imperial assault and look at how they handle “small band of plucky heroes vs endless supply of faceless mooks and an occasional boss”.
I think that some combination of this is in order. The campaign can't be open ended like CC, but it needs to be structured and somewhat linear like what we see in Imperial Assault.
The rebellion starts with Mon Mothma commanding a small "fleet" of 150 points. It must contain 1 Hammerhead and/or 1 Nebulon-B. Up to 40 points of Fighters may be in this fleet, limited to Y-Wings and Z-95's. This fleet will be the basis of the rebel fleet for the rest of the game. Each of the rebel ships get 3x the hull and 2x the shields that are printed on their cards. The rebel fighters get 3x the hit points.
Mission 1 Setup: The empire places 6 objective tokens on the board. Each token must be at range 5 from edge of each side and range 3 from each other. The empire receives 1x Quasar-I, 2x Raider II's, and 1x Quasar I in ships. The Empire receives 3x TIE Fighter squadrons.
Mission 1 Objectives: The rebel forces have discovered a secret listening post of the empire. Objective tokens represent satellites. The rebels need to inspect 5 of the 6 satellites by having a ship end movement within range 2. When a satellite has been inspected, remove that token from the play area.
Information for the empire:
When 2 TIE Fighter squadrons are destroyed: Deploy 3x TIE Fighter squadrons within distance 1 of the Quasar I.
When 3 satellites have been inspected: Deploy a Victory I class ISD within distance 1 of a remaining satellite.
When 5 satellites have been inspected: Any remaining rebel forces may now retreat. If a rebel ship ends its movement with any part of it's base off the gaming mat, that ship has retreated. The Mission ends when all rebel ships have retreated or when all rebel ships are destroyed.
Bonus: If all 6 satellites are inspected, the rebels receive 20 points to add to their fleet total for the remainder of the campaign.
Then you can give different bonuses depending on who wins the mission, and depending on the outcome of the mission, then different missions will be played. In the second mission, the rebels can now add CR90's, Medium Transports, VCX-100's and X-Wings to their fleet...
This is just something I created right here on the spot, so there is no balance or testing. But this is the kind of campaign I would like to see in Armada.
I wonder if either setting specific starting points or reinforcements after a specific wave would be the way to go.
1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:the hardest pointbis having the underdog feel like they can accomplish something...
Yeah, as several people have alluded to, the key is really in making scenarios that work with lopsided forces.
Ideas, ramblings of scenarios, and some battle reports.
3 hours ago, thestag said:
I think that some combination of this is in order. The campaign can't be open ended like CC, but it needs to be structured and somewhat linear like what we see in Imperial Assault.
The rebellion starts with Mon Mothma commanding a small "fleet" of 150 points. It must contain 1 Hammerhead and/or 1 Nebulon-B. Up to 40 points of Fighters may be in this fleet, limited to Y-Wings and Z-95's. This fleet will be the basis of the rebel fleet for the rest of the game. Each of the rebel ships get 3x the hull and 2x the shields that are printed on their cards. The rebel fighters get 3x the hit points.
Mission 1 Setup: The empire places 6 objective tokens on the board. Each token must be at range 5 from edge of each side and range 3 from each other. The empire receives 1x Quasar-I, 2x Raider II's, and 1x Quasar I in ships. The Empire receives 3x TIE Fighter squadrons.
Mission 1 Objectives: The rebel forces have discovered a secret listening post of the empire. Objective tokens represent satellites. The rebels need to inspect 5 of the 6 satellites by having a ship end movement within range 2. When a satellite has been inspected, remove that token from the play area.
Information for the empire:
When 2 TIE Fighter squadrons are destroyed: Deploy 3x TIE Fighter squadrons within distance 1 of the Quasar I.
When 3 satellites have been inspected: Deploy a Victory I class ISD within distance 1 of a remaining satellite.
When 5 satellites have been inspected: Any remaining rebel forces may now retreat. If a rebel ship ends its movement with any part of it's base off the gaming mat, that ship has retreated. The Mission ends when all rebel ships have retreated or when all rebel ships are destroyed.
Bonus: If all 6 satellites are inspected, the rebels receive 20 points to add to their fleet total for the remainder of the campaign.Then you can give different bonuses depending on who wins the mission, and depending on the outcome of the mission, then different missions will be played. In the second mission, the rebels can now add CR90's, Medium Transports, VCX-100's and X-Wings to their fleet...
This is just something I created right here on the spot, so there is no balance or testing. But this is the kind of campaign I would like to see in Armada.
Yea this is the kind of thing I'm looking for, Great thoughts!
My friend and I were just discussing the possibility of running a sort of DMed campaign, with the DM playing one faction and 2 to 4 players playing the other, following a storyline.
Oddly enough, that conversation started by discussing the problem of snowballing in the CC, which moved on to making asymmetric battles fun.
The DMs job would be to build a set of missions that change based on the results of the prior one. If the empire captures critical intel during one game, the next mission might be evacuating a rebel base against imperial scout forces, whereas if the rebels had secured it and escaped, the next mission might be an assault on a sector supply depot, and so on and so forth.
Seems like there are other people here thinking along the same lines.
57 minutes ago, clontroper5 said:Yea this is the kind of thing I'm looking for, Great thoughts!
I just let my 3 Rebels pick a ship between a Hammerhead or CR-90. Each had 5 points to spend on upgrades. No Unique stuff.
It’s pretty much the only way to go.
I was just wondering if it would ruin the sense of immersion for a branching campaign if the entire tree was known in advance by both (or all) sides. I was thinking, if you knew where the campaign was headed, the reward for winning games could be getting to decide which way along the tree the campaign went. That’s only a benefit though if you know what missions and rewards happen down each path and can choose ones favorable to you. Hence needing to see the whole thing in advance.
If only I had the time to create this!
17 minutes ago, Onidsen said:My friend and I were just discussing the possibility of running a sort of DMed campaign, with the DM playing one faction and 2 to 4 players playing the other, following a storyline.
Oddly enough, that conversation started by discussing the problem of snowballing in the CC, which moved on to making asymmetric battles fun.
The DMs job would be to build a set of missions that change based on the results of the prior one. If the empire captures critical intel during one game, the next mission might be evacuating a rebel base against imperial scout forces, whereas if the rebels had secured it and escaped, the next mission might be an assault on a sector supply depot, and so on and so forth.
Seems like there are other people here thinking along the same lines.
I like the Idea of having a DM "bad guy" that controls the story. Fixes a lot of the problems of 2 teams competing in a campaign
9 minutes ago, clontroper5 said:I like the Idea of having a DM "bad guy" that controls the story. Fixes a lot of the problems of 2 teams competing in a campaign
::sigh:: Always the "Bad Guy", never the Thrawn ....
10 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:::sigh:: Always the "Bad Guy", never the Thrawn ....
Oh, he can be Thrawn
8 hours ago, clontroper5 said:Has anyone homebrewed an Assymetrical campaign system for armada?
I mean a system that really emphasis the BiG Evil Empire hunting down the Puny rebellion, more Cat and mouse with the Rebels relying on Hit and Run and the Empire's vaste Fleet spread out across dozens of Sytems in order to Catch the rebel fleet or find their secret base. Kinda like how Rebellion plays,
So has anyone done this (and had a good result?)
FFG did, it's called Rebellion (board game)
Edit: nevermind
I've been working my own DMed type campaign for a while now. I think I'm about ready to do more testing if I can get players try it. Maybe combine it with x-wing and legion some how.
11 minutes ago, Rimsen said:FFG did, it's called Rebellion (board game)
Edit: nevermind
Lol
8 minutes ago, EagleScoutof007 said:I've been working my own DMed type campaign for a while now. I think I'm about ready to do more testing if I can get players try it. Maybe combine it with x-wing and legion some how.
I really like the Idea of combining with legion, I think x-wing will be harder to work in a way that makes sense. Have anything to share with us so far?
2 hours ago, clontroper5 said:I like the Idea of having a DM "bad guy" that controls the story. Fixes a lot of the problems of 2 teams competing in a campaign
If you do setup a campaign. Try to limit your rebels to only a few ships. Nothing too crazy for their ships. Maybe have allies show up in a mission once to help if you want to have a larger battle setting. Giving Rebels a big toy to use on a single mission is pretty fun. Also allows you to bring something big to counter it too. Win win in my opinion.